


Time and Tide

by enenre



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Romance, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 12:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9656756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enenre/pseuds/enenre
Summary: The Battle of Hogwarts is upon them, and as a last resort, Harry and Hermione plot to send Harry to the past, 1927 to be specific, to nip the trouble in the bud before it can even begin thinking of mass destruction. Needless to say, nothing ever goes according to plan where Harry is concerned.





	

It was a moonless night, everything lay still and silent. The Forbidden Forest lay deceptively quiet. The lake was still, the wind held itself motionless. Not even the leaves rustled.

And the Dark Army marched forward.

The mass was indistinguishable, it appeared a sea of darkness and not the individual men and women making it up. At its head stood Voldemort, tall and proud. He was brandishing his wand like a sword, keeping up a steady stream of chanting as he methodically stripped the ancient wards of Hogwarts, leaving the old castle bereft and vulnerable.

Harry Potter stood inside the failing wards of the great castle, resolutely facing Voldemort and his Army, a motley team of witches and wizards backing him up.

Almost every window in the castle had faces pressed against it. The children, too young to join the fight, looked on.

He and his comrades knew in their hearts that this would be the decisive battle. The magical community in Britain had been born in the shadows of Hogwarts. Once the pride of the wizarding world and its the safest place, it teetered now on the precipice of anhiliation. A thousand years of history loomed over them, but it's fate would be decided that day.

On either side of him stood Ron and Hermione, faithful friends till the end, and behind the trio, in battle formation, stood the entirety of Dumbledore’s Army.

“…solvet saeculum in **_favilla_**!”

They each felt it the moment the wards fell. A thousand years of enchantments and protection fell before Tom Riddle as his Army stepped over the threshold of its gates.

And the battle began.

Ron was the first to die. Hermione screamed and fell to the ground, shaking with uncontrollable sobs as he lay on the black ground, his eyes open and lifeless. Harry'd had to cover for her until she'd got a hold of herself. There was no time to grieve. He grit his teeth and looked for the next Death Eater to take down.

It had been doomed from the start. Aside from the Order members, they were all little more than children. The foolish ministry had refused to listen to reason till the end. Harry laughed darkly as he imagined that they would arrive on the scene too late, always a little too late. And the Death Eaters picked them off easily in the meantime, one by one.

When only a few scattered Order members remained, fighting off several Death Eaters to one, Harry truly began to realise that the end had come. There would be no more resistance. There was no one left who could resist. 

The ground was littered with bodies. The thick darkness of the night still enveloped them, and the only light was the occasional flash of green signalling the Killing Curse, and sometimes other colours of a few scattered defensive spells. But, slowly, slowly, dawn was beginning to creep on the scene. The fighters engaged in combat, the bodies on the ground, the deceptive stillness of the Forbidden Forest and finally the massive stone towers of Hogwarts grew flushed with the first light of the sunrise.

 “Hermione!” yelled Harry, ducking as a jet of green light shot at him from a random wand.

“What?” Hermione replied snippily, her eyes fixed on the man she was duelling with.

“I think I need to do it.”

Hermione froze, stunned. Shooting a violent stupefy, which hit the man square on the chest, she whirled around to face him.

“Are you _mad?_ ” she hissed frigidly. Her eyes were blazing, and from the light of the sunrise, he could see the tear-tracks on her face. She looked furious.

“There’s no other choice!” he yelled angrily, “he’s too strong and we’ve lost so many people already!”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” she asked quietly, bitterness lacing her words, “So many things can go wrong, Harry. You could end up destroying this world!”

“No! No,” he said calmer, “I need to do this. I can prevent all this pointless death—“

“Oh Harry! It’s not that easy! Firstly, even on the off chance that it works, there’s no way for you to come back,” Hermione croaked out, her voice breaking into a sob.

Harry looked at his best friend in the eye and said, “I can’t possibly give up when we still have a chance at winning. I would give my life to ensure this!”

“But—“

“My apologies for breaking up this lover’s spat,” interrupted Voldemort’s high cruel voice. Not giving them a moment's pause, he immediately shot the killing curse straight at them. Harry pulled Hermione out of its way and they both tumbled to the ground, Hermione’s arm scraping roughly against a jutting piece of rock causing her to lose her grip on her wand. It rolled away.

They didn’t stand a chance after that. Voldemort held his wand at point blank range and smirked gleefully, “Tell me now, who first? Shall I kill the mudblood first? Or shall I let her watch as I do away with the _Chosen one_ ,” he snarled the words as though they were scum.

“No! I won’t let you kill Harry!” cried Hermione as she placed herself squarely in front of Harry.

Voldemort’s eyebrows shot up as he looked extremely surprised by the bold move, “Now, this looks awfully familiar,” he commented lightly.

He was talking about his _mum!_ Harry roared and pushed Hermione aside roughly, “Avada Kedavra!”

Voldemort merely stepped aside to avoid the speeding light, it hit a tree at the edge of the forbidden forest and dissipated harmlessly. 

In the next moment, there occurred as series of events, so fast that Harry sometimes had trouble remembering exactly what had happened; Hermione threw herself at Voldemort, grabbing his bone-white wand and forcibly pointing it away, then she screamed,  “Harry!”

For a second nobody moved; Voldemort, too stunned and Harry, mind blank.

Then Harry pulled out a tiny time turner from under his robes, about a quarter length that of the one Hermione had used in their third year and flipped it, concentrating furiously on where he wanted to end up. 

And the world turned upside down.

Everything spun around him, Voldemort’s stunned visage and Hermione’s determined one disappeared and there remained only swirling masses of colours and odd noises. He had the sensation of flipping about violently and for a second had the horrible thought that he might not survive the journey and it would have all been a waste anyway, and he could have at least stayed behind to protect Hermione!  

That bitter thought passed, however, as the world began to slow down again. 

By his calculation, he had worked out that, if, in his second year, the Chamber of Secrets had been opened fifty years ago, then Voldemort would have been sixteen in the year 1942, so he would have been born in the year 1926 or 1927. So Harry would need to end up sometime after the year 1927 to get a good shot to finish the bastard off.

But what if he had already passed 1927? He panicked for a moment, no idea what time he was sailing through. Should he stop now or continue for a bit more? He thought furiously. 

Oh _fuck!_ He stopped turning it. 

The spinning slowed down even further and then stopped suddenly, but his disorientation continued. He bent over and puked everything he had eaten out onto the grass, getting some vomit on his shoes. He used his wand to tiredly wave over his feet and clean up the mess.

Finally taking stock of his surroundings he was pleased to note that he was at the same place he had been seconds ago, but now, it was devoid of the lifeless bodies and chaos and appeared much brighter. The tip of the forest was visible against the lightening sky and he could actually make out the trees now.

This was no time to enjoy the sunrise, however, he had to quickly kill the baby Voldemort and then use the time turner to go back to the fut—

He stopped short. That’s right. There was no possible way to go back to the future.

 

***

 

It was a plan doomed to fail before it had begun. 

When he found the time-turner among Dumbledore’s old possessions, he had kept it, on the whim that it may prove useful somehow in the war. He'd had no idea, then, exactly what he had in his possession.

Hermione, obviously, had been the one to figure out what it was. She had scoured through books after books until she had found a paragraph in one of the dustier tomes, describing this exact time-turner. Similar to the Deathly Hallows, the time-turner was a thing of myths and children's tales. The book had gone into detail on some of the literature surrounding the time-tuner but had granted a measly paragraph to describe just what it did. It had stated, in no uncertain terms, that the device could be used to traverse through large periods of time. But that was it, the rest was theory and speculation. Its limit had never been tested since it couldn't conceivably be tested. Once used, it did not follow the traveller and ended up back in its original time, usually in the oddest of places. Dumbledore must have chanced upon this and kept it safe for an urgent need in the future.

That night, sleeping on the floor at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, the idea had struck Harry like a lightning, and refused to leave him. During Hermione's explanation, he had briefly considered going back in time to save his parents, but this, _this_ , he felt was perfect. Why not nip the problem in the bud before it could even _think_ of causing this much headache?

Ron had been completely for it as only a loyal, reckless friend could, but Hermione had wavered between thinking that it _may_ be possible to completely disregarding it as monumentally stupid. Despite her aversion to the plan, she had helped him figure out which year he would ideally need to end up in to successfully kill Riddle, and had told him repeatedly that he was only to use it in the case that they had no hope left (i.e. everyone was dead).

It didn’t strike any of them at that time to bother about coming back to the future.

 

***

 

It didn’t matter now, Harry thought to himself. At the very least, he could kill Tom Riddle and everyone he loved would be safe, and that was enough.

From Dumbledore’s lessons the previous year, he knew that Tom Riddle had spent the first ten years of his life and the summers succeeding those at Wool’s Orphanage in London. His best bet would be to get to downtown London and try to find Wool’s Orphanage and then…

Perhaps he should check the date first. Then he would know what to expect, how old Riddle would be. And it wouldn’t hurt to get to know Dumbledore and have him on his side. 

Yes, he should head to Hogwarts first, examine the situation and then go on his mission. Hermione would be proud that he was thinking everything through.

With that happy resolution in mind, he walked toward the large front doors of Hogwarts leading to the entrance hall, charming his robes, which so proudly stated that he was a member of Gryffindor, into non-descript black ones. 

It was quite bright now as the sun was up. There would definitely be some early-risers already having breakfast. He knocked sharply on the wooden doors and waited for someone to open up. 

Out of the corner of his eyes he saw something large move in the distance. As the sun was behind the figure, the basic shape, which was human, was all he could make out. That was probably the groundskeeper at Hogwarts of this time, he told himself, before turning back and knocking, three sharp knocks, on the doors again. 

“Yeh?” came a rough voice on the wrong side of the door. And it sounded horribly familiar. He turned around, fully prepared to meet a Mr Ogg, if he remembered correctly, who was the groundskeeper at this time, but to his great shock, met the large form of his dear friend Hagrid instead.

His mouth hanging open, it took some time for Harry’s brain to register the full implications of seeing Hagrid here, but just as he realised what this meant, the door flew open and a tall and imposing figure stood framed in the doorway.

“May I help you?” came the smooth voice of the charming Tom Riddle.

**Author's Note:**

> "solvet saeculum in favilla" - part of a latin hymn Dies Irae approximately translated to 'heaven and earth in ashes lay'.


End file.
